By February 23, 1898, three trials had evolved from the discovery that a traitor in the French Army was selling information to German diplomats; each had yielded a verdict that, backed by the full weight and influence of the General Staff, was inevitable yet problematic, as the reliability of the evidence became increasingly suspect.
December 23, 1894: Thirty-five year old Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew, is convicted of having composed the telltale bordereau recovered from the German embassy and is sentenced to life imprisonment on a remote South American island.
January 12, 1898: Commandant Walsin Esterazy is acquitted of the same crime, despite an unsavory history of deceit, depravity, and indebtedness, and a handwriting, according to most observers, identical to that of the bordereau.
Six weeks later: A jury finds novelist Emile Zola guilty of libel, since he could never prove that Esterhazy's judges had exonerated "on command" a defendant whom they knew to be a spy; the accusation was as true as all the others Zola had fired from his explosive pen denouncing the government and the military establishment for malfeasance and miscarriage of justice.
Zola's J'Accuse ignited a civil war in the salons of Paris.
A cadre of journalists from La Revue Blanche began gathering signatures from well-known academics, writers, scientists, poets, and artists for petitions first condemning "the violation of judicial norms in the 1894 trial and the iniquities surrounding the Esterhazy affair" and second requesting "the preservation of legal guarantees for ordinary citizens." (Bredin, p. 276)
Publishing the former in L'Aurore under the title "Manifesto of the Intellectuals," Georges Clemenceau thus popularized what had been an obscure, pejorative term applied by their adversaries to men of letters and science who had the audacity to opine on public issues. One distinguished critic raged that "to designate as something in the order of a noble caste people living in laboratories and libraries is . . . one of the most ridiculous foibles of our era." (Bredin, pp. 276-277)
If the pro-Dreyfus faction ("Dreyfusards") were trumpeting their autonomy and defending justice and law, the anti-Dreyfusards had their own legion of intellectual mouthpieces who rallied in support of the established order, the Church, the Army, and res judicata. (Bredin, p. 278)
It was a house divided; almost everyone succumbed to the madness, certain in his heart that "France could be saved only by damning Dreyfus or rescuing him," and ultimately becoming so consumed by the battle that in time the fate of the victim faded into irrelevancy. (Lewis, p. 221)
"The struggle was now against institutions, against hierarchy, against military authority, and against the Catholics as much as it was for Alfred Dreyfus dying on Devil's Island . . . At stake was a moral cause, a society in which justice and equality would reign." (Bredin, p. 284)
Similarly, the anti-Dreyfusards had nearly forgotten their traitor, depersonalizing him into a symbol of all the social and intellectual types who threatened the stability and unity of their country: Jews, Protestants, socialists, liberal priests, emancipated women, and striking workers. (Bredin, p. 284)
Activism in the world of letters would reverberate far beyond the printing presses and Parisian parlors. If in February 1898 the bureaucrats and legislators were uniformly anti-Dreyfusard, by the end of the year they had begun to realign themselves. By elaborating for the first time in French history the role of intellectuals in the body politic, Zola had revealed their capacity to influence the nation's governors. (Bredin, p. 285)
The Dreyfusards' elation in June 1898 at the elevation to Prime Minister of Henri Brisson -- a distinguished republican whom his colleagues in the Chamber of Deputies regarded as an antidote to the reactionary right -- promptly vanished when he rewarded the Nationalists who had voted for him by appointing Godefroy Cavaignac Minister of War. Like one of his predecessors, Auguste Mercier, Cavaignac was tall, solemn, arrogant, and ambitious, passionately anti-Dreyfusard, steadfastly loyal to the Army, and domineering enough to rule the cabinet. (Lewis, pp. 238-239)
Cavaignac's rigorous examination of the Secret Dossier (which now housed three hundred documents) confirmed for him that the Army's case was ironclad. If he harbored doubts about the handwriting of the bordereau, which resembled that of Esterhazy, he resolved the dilemma by theorizing that, since the bordereau contained gunnery information which only Dreyfus would have been privy to, the pair had collaborated. (Chapman, p. 211)
Determined to bury the Affair forever, on July 7 Cavaignac strode to the rostrum and announced to the Chamber, "I am completely certain of Dreyfus's guilt" -- acknowledging, however, that an officer whom he did not mention by name, the true author of the bordereau, had been acquitted in error and would be "stricken tomorrow with the punishment he deserves." (Chapman, p. 212; Bredin, p. 309)
Then, attesting their "material and moral authenticity," he produced three documents: the April 1894 letter written from Schwarzkopppen to Panizzardi in which he spoke of receiving "master plans of Nice" from "scoundrel D"; the letter of 1896 in which Commandant Henry had changed the date to March 1894 and the identification of a person bringing Panizzardi "a number of interesting things" from P to D; and the decisive proof, the forgery to which Henry had attached Panizzardi's "My dear friend" salutation and "Alexandrine" signature. Finally, Cavaignac claimed possession of an affidavit from Captain Lebrun-Renault's verifying Dreyfus's confession. (Lewis, p. 232)
When he fell silent, the entire Chamber rose in acclamation. A motion was overwhelmingly ratified to have the speech printed at public expense and posted in the thirty thousand communes of France. (Lewis, p. 232)
Two days later the valiant Colonel Georges Picquart -- the former head of Counter-intelligence who had fingered Esterhazy as the real culprit and had been demeaned and demoted by his superiors for his efforts to bring the truth to light -- wrote to Prime Minister Brisson (and communicated to the press) that "the two documents dated 1894 cannot be applied to Dreyfus and the one dated 1896 has every appearance of being a forgery." (Bredin, p. 316)
Cavaignac was furious. He ordered Picquart arrested on the grounds of divulging official secrets, and stunned the Prime Minister's Cabinet by threatening to file suit before the High Court of the Senate against a host of prominent Dreyfusards -- among them Auguste Scheurer-Kestner, Socialist leader Jean Jaures (who had written his own open letter to the Minister of War refuting his evidence and conclusions), Georges Clemenceau, and Mathieu Dreyfus. The Cabinet, seeking to disprove Picquart and Jaures and to validate their War Minister, initiated an expert review of the Secret Dossier. (Lewis, p. 233)
Indeed, it was already in progress; as instructed by Cavaignac, Captain Louis Cuignet had been meticulously sifting through the file for the past month. On August 13, scrutinizing the faux Henry for the first time, Cuignet noticed two shocking peculiarities. "The heading and the signature appeared on paper whose lines were bluish gray; the body of the letter on fragments whose lines were pale violet." Nor did the measurement of the graph lines match. The principal piece condemning Dreyfus -- which Cuignet's friend, Commandant Henry, claimed to have obtained from the German embassy -- was a forgery, and it was placarded all over France. (Bredin, p. 324)
On August 30, Cavaignac summoned Henry to his office, and interrogated him in the presence of Chief of Staff Boisdeffre and Deputy Chief of Staff Gonse. Henry initial response was to lie, to deny any tampering or fabrication, until gradually his "remonstrations weakened, contradicted themselves, and finally collapsed." After an hour of intense badgering, when challenged with, "So this is what happened. You received in 1896 an envelope with a letter of no significance. You destroyed the letter and you manufactured the other," he weakly conceded, "Yes." (Lewis, p. 237; Chapman, p. 224)
When asked who had put the idea in his head, Henry explained: "My superiors were worried and I wanted to calm them. I said to myself: 'Let's add just a sentence; if we had a piece of evidence in this situation, we're in! Nobody knew anything about it . . . I acted solely in the interests of my country.' " (Lewis, p. 237)
Chief of Staff Boisdeffre took a sheet of paper from the Minister's desk and resigned, stating his trust in his Chief of Counter-intelligence was no longer justified. (Bredin, p. 328)
Imprisoned in Mont-Valerian, Henry took up his own pen. He solicited a visit from General Gonse, and protested disingenuously to his wife, "My letter is a copy and there is no touch of forgery." At three o'clock in the afternoon in the stifling heat he took off his clothes, stretched out on his bed, and slit his throat. Three hours later an orderly bringing his supper found the bloody corpse. (Chapman, p. 226)
Having risen from his peasant origins to the General Staff and earned the respect and confidence of gentlemen, perhaps Henry feared that, by living, he might cause irrevocable harm to the honor of the Army he loved. (Lewis, p. 240)
Upon hearing of Henry's suicide, Esterhazy shaved off his mustache, boarded a train for Mauberge, and crossed the Belgian border on foot. From Brussels he fled to London and settled under the name of de Becourt. (Bredin, p. 336)
The next domino to fall was Minister of War Cavaignac. Obstinately adhering to his warped paradigm, he was left with no choice but to step down when his colleagues in the Cabinet voted over his objections to consider Lucie Dreyfus's request for a reopening of her husband's case. (Lewis. p. 241)
The anti-Dreyfusards transformed Commandant Henry into a martyred patriot. In a series of articles entitled "The First Blood," Charles Maurras, an obscure poet and journalist, advanced the fanciful thesis that Henry had acted with "intellectual and moral nobility" for the public good and that his "unlucky forgery will be acclaimed as one of the finest deeds of war." (Chapman, p. 228)
La Libre Parole launched a national subscription campaign on behalf of Madame Henry and her children; its goal was to safeguard the reputation of the "French officer killed, murdered by the Jews." Week after week it published the names of the donors, who numbered 25,000 and filled a seven hundred page book, and the sums collected, which totaled 130,000 francs. (Bredin, p. 350)
Virulent anti-Semitic commentaries accompanied many contributions. Poverty, exploitation, and unemployment were blamed on the Jews. Lumped together with Protestants, Freemasons, republicans, and intellectuals, they were perceived as agents of social upheaval and polluters of moral values who ranked no higher on the biological ladder than insects, toads, reptiles, and monkeys. Among the remedies proposed for eradication of this scourge were vivisection, roasting, massacre, and "converting their flesh to mincemeat." (Bredin, pp. 352-353)
On September 26, Prime Minister Brisson's Cabinet voted (by a majority of two) to forward Lucie Dreyfus's application to the High Court of Appeals, specifically the Criminal Chamber (there were also a Civil Chamber and a Petitions Chamber), which was presided over by the courageous and incorruptible Justice Louis Loew. Four weeks later the jurist assigned to investigate, Maitre Alphonse Bard, presented his findings. In a masterly report that weighed every shred of available evidence and adduced the truth with inflexible logic, he concluded that revision was justified and that the Criminal Chamber should hear the case in plenary session. (Lewis, pp. 248, 253)
By now the country had a new Prime Minister and Minister of War. In Central Africa at Fashoda, futilely attempting to block access to the south, a French force of two hundred under Captain Jean Baptiste Marchand stood face-to-face with Lord Kitchener's 30,000-strong Anglo-Egyptian Army. In Paris an odor of insurrection permeated the streets as several hundred laborers walked off the site of the upcoming World's Fair; shortly they were joined by 20,000 construction workers and a union of railway employees. (Bredin, pp. 342-343)
To maintain order Cavaignac's successor, General Charles Chanoine, summoned to Paris 70,000 troops, whom militant nationalists and anti-Dreyfusards embraced as potential allies. On October 25, Chamoine marched to the Chamber, proclaimed Dreyfus's guilt, and abruptly resigned. With that, the majority center abandoned Prime Minister Brisson, and he followed suit. (Lewis, pp. 251-252)
If Chanoine had hoped his betrayal of Brisson would drive his panicked countrymen into the protective clutches of the Army and halt the revisionist movement, he was quickly disillusioned. With the Republicans in the Senate and the Chamber insistent on sustaining the supremacy of civilian government, President Felix Faures invited Charles Dupuy, who had been Prime Minister at the time of Dreyfus's conviction, to return to the office. Attuned to the political winds, Dupuy recalled a former Minister of War but a private citizen who had been in retirement for six years, Charles de Freycinet, to the post. (Bredin, p. 359)
Meanwhile, the parade of familiar figures before the Criminal Chamber of the High Court proceeded apace. Four War Ministers -- Mercier, Billot, Cavaignac, Chanoine -- all affirmed Dreyfus's guilt. Mercier attempted to prove it. "He admitted that he had secured no confession from Dreyfus through Du Paty, but he accepted Lebrun-Renault's statement. Asked why, in that case, he had not made a report, he answered, 'It was a closed case. It could not be foreseen that a whole race would later line up behind Dreyfus.' Asked about the communication of the Secret Dossier at the trial, he claimed that since Mme. Dreyfus's application had not mentioned this, the matter was irrelevant, and he refused to say yes or no." (Chapman, pp. 239-240)
"Colonel Picquart, removed from prison, told in detail all that he knew. His calmness, his precision, and his moderation, in contrast with the passions agitating the previous witnesses, made a deep impression on the magistrates." (Bredin, p. 360)
One of the seven judges in the 1894 court-martial, Martin Freystaetter, now believed the verdict was wrong; he testified that one of the critical documents, the scoundrel D letter, had never been discussed in open court. (Lewis, p. 262)
Esterhazy was granted safe-conduct to give his deposition. He lamented having been deserted by his cowardly and ungrateful superiors; as for the bordereau, since the first court-martial had attributed it to Dreyfus and the second had absolved him, he had nothing more to add. (Chapman, p. 251)
Anticipating defeat, the anti-Dreyfusards devised a daring strategy. Unofficial polling of the thirty-three members of the Civil and Petitions Chambers suggested that they strongly opposed revision and that, sitting with the Criminal Chamber, they would outvote its sixteen judges. The accusation by Civil Court Judge Quesnay de Beaurepaire that Justice Loew had interviewed and coached Colonel Picquart before his testimony, coupled with the nearness of national elections, gave the anti-Dreyfusards the wedge they needed. They pressured Dupuy into introducing a bill on January 28, 1899, requiring adjudication by the united branches of the High Court rather than the Criminal Chamber in cases of treason. (Lewis, p. 262)
Such a dispossession of a high court just days before its expected judgment was unheard of and in defiance of the law. In the Chamber of Deputies, Renault-Morliere, a former appellate attorney, charged his colleagues, "You are killing in this nation the very idea of justice." In the Senate, celebrated sage Rene Waldeck-Rousseau attacked "the suspect and feeble measure as a violation of legal principle and an outrage to conscience." (Bredin, pp. 371-372, 377)
The bill became law on March 1, and effectively canceled the Criminal Court's February 9th nullification of Dreyfus's 1894 conviction. The legal drama now had to replayed before the entire High Court of Appeals. (Lewis, p. 262)
It took three months. On May 29, the Court heard the arguments of counsel: Manau, the Procureur-General; Ballot-Beaupre, the rapporteur; and Henri Mornard, for Lucie Dreyfus. All three concluded that the bordereau had been written not by Dreyfus but by Esterhazy, but, bowing to the wishes of the Dreyfuses -- who wanted Alfred's name cleared by his peers -- and a majority of the judges, conceded that a new element had emerged -- the secret transmittal of the "scoundrel D" letter -- which mandated a retrial. (Chapman, pp. 262-264)
Thus, on June 3, the Chief Justice read to a silent assemblage: "The Court hereby rescinds and annuls the verdict rendered on December 28, 1894, against Alfred Dreyfus, and sends the accused before the Court-Martial at Rennes." A special ship, the Sjax, was dispatched to bring home to France the man who had been imprisoned on Devil's Island for more than four years. (Lewis, p. 267)
En route he would topple yet another administration. The death of Felix Faure on February 16 had enabled Dreyfus sympathizer Emile Loubet to ascend to the presidency. One day after the High Court's decision, while attending the steeplechase at Auteil, he was loudly derided by a crowd of rowdy royalists, then physically assaulted by one brandishing a walking stick. A week later, as thousands of citizens marched in homage to Loubet, the Chamber of Deputies "resolved to support only those governments intent on defending vigorously the institutions of the Republic and maintaining public order." By a vote of 296 to 159, Charles Dupuy was repudiated. (Bredin, p. 387)
Hoping to unite the disparate sects of republicanism -- Socialists, Progressives, and Radicals who were now bereft of leaders and policies -- Loubet appealed to the soft-spoken yet prestigious Rene Waldeck-Rousseau, "a parliamentarian whose intelligence, seriousness, and integrity were widely recognized." He would govern for three years, "almost by himself, keeping his president . . . at a distance and demanding of his ministers an unprecedented degree of submission." (Bredin, pp. 391, 393)
He made an exception only for his old friend General Gaston de Galliffet, whom he named Minister of War in order mollify the Army. Galliffet was tall, haughty, flamboyant, and caustic. If the republicans loathed him for his bloody suppression of the Paris communes in 1871, their fears were assuaged by his commitment to Dreyfus's innocence and his scorn for "conspiring generals." (Chapman, p. 272; Bredin, p. 396)
After three weeks at sea, the debilitated, emaciated Alfred Dreyfus arrived at the military prison at Rennes, where he was reunited with his loyal wife Lucie. "Hands entwined, mute, they cried. 'Their feelings were too intense to be expressed by human speech,' Dreyfus said simply." (Lewis, p. 274)
His team of attorneys -- the elderly, tactful, conservative Edgar Demange and the youthful, fiery, aggressive Fernand Labori -- came to prepare him for his trial. "Of all the literate persons on the planet, Dreyfus was probably the most ignorant of the Affair. From Demange he heard the name Esterhazy for the first time. He learned of Picquart's discovery of the petit bleu and of the Army's attempt to conceal the document. He strained to comprehend Zola's tempestuous intervention, Henry's suicide, Boisdeffre's resignation . . . the mustering of the intellectuals and politicians for and against him, and the worldwide passion aroused by his plight." (Lewis, p. 274)
The court convened on August 7, Colonel Albert Jouast presiding. The entrance of the accused evoked a gasp from the spectators; in his decrepit condition, he was a disappointing icon for the tumultuous firestorm that had rent the nation's fabric: "a little old man -- an old, old man of thirty-nine, a small-statured, thick-set old man in the black uniform of the artillery" who had the "gait of an Egyptian mummy," wrote one journalist. (Chapman, p. 288; Lewis, p. 281)
Colonel Jouast's opening interrogation was brutal, harsh, and adversarial. If Dreyfus tried to expound upon his one-word "No" or "Never" replies, Joust sharply reprimanded him: "That is unnecessary talk. Do you deny or don't you?" (Bredin, pp. 405-406)
When handed the bordereau, Dreyfus spurned it and insisted, "I am innocent. I have tolerated so much for five years, my Colonel, but one more time, for the honor of my name and that of my children, I am innocent." He lost his composure only once. When confronted with his putative confession, he lashed out: "It's iniquitous to condemn an innocent man! I never confessed anything! Never!" (Bredin, p.405, Lewis,p. 283)
In fact, his stoicism provoked one partisan to complain, "What was needed was an actor, and he was a soldier." (Bredin, p. 406)
For four days the court studied the Secret Dossier in closed session, and found, as had so many who preceded them, no proof of treason, but merely "innuendo, abuse, irrelevance, duplication, and one or two forgeries." (Lewis, p. 283)
The spectacle wore on, as a marathon of witnesses repeated their tired war stories. Former President Casimir-Perier disputed the vicious rumor that he had promised the Dreyfus family an open trial. Cavaignac reiterated the alleged confession. Billot castigated Picquart for wasting secret service funds on frivolous projects. Freycinet was outraged by the thirty-five million francs the Dreyfusard syndicate had imported into France. Gonse refused responsibility for anything, lied to cover his errors, betrayed his associates, and finally admitted he had falsified testimony. Picquart, the defrocked soldier who had been released from prison, "without hesitation or confusion, explained the case for seven hours and a half." Ten handwriting experts contradicted themselves. (Chapman, pp. 289-291)
Two well-known personages did not appear. Esterhazy pled poverty from his London asylum, while Du Paty, armed with medical certificates, stuck to his sickbed. (Chapman, p. 292)
The most dominating presence -- and the most devastating to Dreyfus -- was Minister of War Mercier. He now regarded himself as the nation's savior by virtue of his resourceful conduct back in 1894. He titillated his listeners with gossip implying that the Kaiser himself was actively involved in espionage and had personally corresponded with his master spy, Captain Dreyfus. His most sensational revelation was that on the evening of January 6, 1895, he, the President of the Republic (Casimir-Perier, who ridiculed the tale), and the Prime Minister had waited four and a half hours at the Elysee in excruciating suspense to learn if peace or war would ensue from an exchange of notes. (Chapman, p. 292)
"Mercier droned on, mechanically removing document after document from his leather portfolio for the clerk to read to the court," acknowledging and justifying the Secret Dossier passed to the judges in 1894 while shifting the blame to the deceased Sandherr, obfuscating, distorting, and inventing facts to reinforce his entrenchment -- until finally, after four hours, he turned to Dreyfus and said: "I am an honest man and the son of an honest man. If the slightest doubt had crossed my mind, I would be the first to declare and to say before you, to Captain Dreyfus, that I was mistaken in good faith." Dreyfus rose and cried, "That's what you ought to do. It's your duty." (Lewis, p. 287; Chapman, p. 294)
Mercier had thrown down the gauntlet. The court-martial must choose either him or Dreyfus. (Chapman, p. 294)
When it came time for each side to give its summation, the Dreyfusards believed that their best chance for an acquittal was to muzzle the irrepressible Labori. Three weeks earlier he had narrowly escaped death from an assassin's bullet -- it had missed his spine by a millimeter and stopped just short of a lung -- but was now prepared to deploy his considerable theatrical talents to emphasize the travesty of Zola's trial, to elucidate the motive of Henry's suicide, and to flourish the incontrovertible proof of Esterhazy's guilt. (Lewis, p. 296)
But he acquiesced to the wishes of his client, and deferred to his partner. Demange spoke for seven hours, persuasively, respectfully, eloquently. His plea was "a masterpiece of logic and clarity . . . solid, clear, prudent, moderate, imbued with honesty, common sense, and compassion," wrote two observers, yet perhaps too patronizing for Labori, who cringed at the words, "I am sure doubt will at least have entered your minds, and doubt is enough for you to acquit Dreyfus," because, for him, there could be no doubt. (Bredin, p. 425)
That same day, September 9, after deliberating ninety minutes, the tribunal returned to the courtroom. "Scarcely able to master his voice," Colonel Jouast delivered the verdict -- by a majority of five to two, guilty of treason with extenuating circumstances. Instead of life, Dreyfus was sentenced to ten years confinement, five of which he had already served. (Chapman, p. 298; Lewis, p. 297)
Prime Minister Waldeck-Rousseau may not have been surprised, but he was surely distressed. He yearned for a resolution that would put an end to the Affair, satisfy justice, reconcile Frenchmen, and restore public tranquility. Even if Dreyfus's petition for an appeal were accepted, a third court-martial, in the words of Galliffet, "would condemn him six to one, a fourth unanimously," so intransigent was the Army. (Bredin, pp. 429-430)
The only means of extrication was a pardon, and an immediate one, so as to avoid its being perceived as an act of pity. But would Dreyfus even accept a pardon which would entail a dual sacrifice: his personal honor for his freedom and his advocates' universal principles for expediency? And would not his own clemency predestine a general amnesty for all the military officials who had been embroiled in the controversy? (Bredin, pp. 430-431)
In the end he yielded -- sensitive to the anxieties of his wife and children and recognizing that the precarious state of his health might prevent his surviving further incarceration. Granted his freedom on September 19, 1899, he pledged, "Liberty is nothing without honor. From this day forward I will continue to seek amends for the shocking judicial wrong of which I am still a victim." (Lewis, p. 303)
"As a deportee Dreyfus could cause displeasure to no one. As a free man, he accumulated the rancor of many." For most Dreyfusards, he was at best a neutral, emotionless hero, at worst an egocentric, aloof ingrate. (Bredin, p. 436; Lewis, p. 304)
The idealist Charles Peguy wrote bitterly, "We might have died for Dreyfus, but Dreyfus would not have died for Dreyfus" -- which was a variation of Theodore Herzl's "One can't even guarantee that he would have been on the side of the victim if someone else had suffered the same fate in his place." (Lewis, p. 304)
Labori was even more vituperative, excoriating his client as beneath the cause he embodied and incapable of fulfilling the role to which he was destined. He wrote: "Alfred Dreyfus . . . may . . . prefer his freedom to his legal honor. But in doing so . . . he is acting purely as an individual, not as a member of the human collective, in solidarity with his fellow men. However great the role he may have played, he is no longer representative of anything." (Bredin, pp. 436, 448-449)
Georges Picquart never forgave Dreyfus for the pardon which facilitated amnesty for Mercier and other criminals. Waldeck-Rousseau introduced the bill in the Chamber in January 1900 and nurtured it to passage almost twelve months later. In nullifying charges against Du Paty, Esterhazy, and Mercier, it denied Picquart, who had been disgraced by accusations of forgery and dereliction of duty, any opportunity of judicial exoneration. (Lewis, p. 309)
On April 6, 1903, Socialist leader Jean Jaures rose in the Chamber of Deputies, ostensibly to argue against the seating of a young Nationalist. Within minutes the Affair was rekindled, as Jaures recounted the cabals of generals, ministers, leagues, and clerics, and unveiled startling new evidence that might allow the case to be reopened: the photograph of a bordereau referring to Dreyfus and annotated by Kaiser Wilhelm himself which Mercier at Rennes had claimed to have in his possession. The Chamber declined to take action, but the Minister of War, Louis Andre, ordered an administrative inquest. (Bredin, p. 461)
Assisted by his aide-de-camp, Major A. L. Targe, Andre embarked upon his task with resolute thoroughness. The two immediately confirmed two forgeries: (1) the letter by Panizzardi in which Henry had changed "P . . . had brought him many interesting things" to "D . . . had brought him many interesting things"; and (2) another letter discussing railroad information in which Henry had torn off the original date (March 28, 1895, when Dreyfus was already on Devil's Island) and replaced it with August 1894. Archivist Gribelin, who worshiped Henry, nonetheless confessed how his boss augmented Picquart's expense account in order to implicate him for squandering funds. (Bredin, pp. 461-462)
Based on Andre's report, which was submitted on October 19, the Minister of Justice solicited from Alfred Dreyfus and his attorney, Henri Mornard, a request for a revision of the Rennes court-martial. On December 25, Public Prosecutor Manuel Baudouin was assigned to present the case to the Criminal Chamber of the High Court of Appeals. "Baudouin worked with extreme diligence, became fully acquainted with the immense file, and was gradually persuaded of Dreyfus's innocence." (Bredin, pp. 462-465)
For eight months, from March to November 1904, the Criminal Chamber plodded through the mountain of paper, then summoned once more to the stage all the veterans of the drama -- those who were still alive -- and a few ingenues. Nearly all recited verbatim their well-rehearsed scripts, although for some the fire was diminished. (Lewis, pp. 315-316, Bredin, p. 467)
Mercier clung to Dreyfus's guilt and dismissed the annotated bordereau as "a completely inexact fable." Gonse denied everything and sought refuge in amnesia. Du Paty, clearly unstable, finally surrendered the original draft of the commentary he had prepared in 1894. Picquart's deposition was his usual precise mastery of the facts. Madame Bastian -- half-witted, illiterate, anti-Semitic -- added comic relief as she bemoaned the loss of her job at the German embassy and her livelihood. (Lewis. p. 316; Bredin, p. 467)
Finally, a committee of artillery experts swore that no gunner could have written the bordereau and that the famous secret manual was in fact not confidential. And two mathematicians and a scientist debunked Alphonse Bertillon's system of handwriting analysis and established Esterhazy as the author of the bordereau. (Chapman, p. 347)
On November 19, 1904, in accordance with the dispossession law of 1899, the Criminal Chamber forwarded the case to the Combined Chambers of the High Court. Beset by international and domestic crises that would eventually turn him out of office -- a conflict with Germany over Morocco, protests by peasants and the Army over implementation of Separation of Church and State laws, worker strikes -- Prime Minister Maurice Rouvier prevailed upon the Court to delay its session -- for nineteen months. (Lewis, pp. 316-317)
Beginning June 18, 1906, the united courts met to hear the three reporting judges. On this occasion there was no first-night crowd, only a few family members, lawyers, and journalists. The police were conspicuously absent. (Chapman, p. 350)
Rapporteur Claude Moras asserted that Dreyfus had not written the bordereau and had not confessed, that the annotated bordereau was a myth, and that the Foreign Office version of the Panizzardi telegram (which Henry had doctored) was authentic. Thus revision was justified. (Chapman, p. 350)
Public Prosecutor Baudouin, speaking with passion and vehemence, indicted all who had impeded the work of truth, and asked for annulment without further adjudication. (Bredin, pp. 476-477)
Attorney Mornand was appearing before the High Court on behalf of his client for the fourth time. He argued that, the bordereau having been invalidated, the confession discredited, and the forgeries exposed, no criminal charges remained pending against Dreyfus and thus the prescribed condition for forgoing a new trial had been fulfilled. (Bredin, p. 478)
"On July 12, 1906, Chief Justice Ballot-Beaupre announced the Court's decision: the Rennes verdict was annulled and Dreyfus absolved of all charges by unanimous vote; by majority vote there was to be no referral of the case to a military tribunal." (Lewis, p. 317)
"It had taken twelve years for France to vindicate an innocent man." (Bredin, p. 481)
The following day the Chamber passed two bills reintegrating Dreyfus and Picquart into the Army. Picquart regained all his seniority and became a brigadier general retroactively as of 1903. Dreyfus was awarded the cross of the Legion of Honor and promoted to major and squadron chief, effective on the date of the promulgation of the law. Hence he was deprived of any chance of attaining those higher ranks to which he had always aspired. (Bredin, p. 482)
When, during the debate, Minister of War Mercier, now a Senator, professed that his conscience did not allow an affirmative vote, he was riposted by an early Dreyfusard: "If we desired to extend our need for justice, there is one man who should take the prison cell of the honorable victim whose innocence, after long and terrible sufferings, was yesterday confirmed. That man, sir, is you." (Chapman, p. 353)
Dreyfus left the Army in 1907. He returned to active duty as a lieutenant colonel in 1914, served on the same front at Verdun as his officer son, and retired after the war as a colonel in the reserves. He spent the last years of his life in quiet seclusion writing his memoirs, almost reliving his captivity. His ordeals had ruined his health, shrinking a diligent, ambitious officer into a withdrawn and unoccupied old man. "He retreated into himself," wrote his son, ". . . and scarcely knew any longer how to communicate his emotions to others. He had simply lost the habit of expressing them." He died after a long illness following surgery on July 12, 1935. (Lewis, pp. 319-320)
Dreyfus the man declined to assume the mantle of a Dreyfusard. He never saw or described himself as a hero or martyr. "I was only an artillery officer whom a tragic error prevented from following his course," he told a friend. "Dreyfus as a symbol of justice is not me; that Dreyfus was created by you." (Bredin, pp. 489-491)
His heroism consisted solely of enduring the terrible conditions to which he was subjected, fortified by courage and the invincibility of his convictions: a passionate patriotism, a quasi-religious faith in the virtues of his country, and a belief in the ultimate triumph of truth and justice. (Bredin, p. 495)
If the Affair can be explained as accentuating differences between Dreyfusard and anti-Dreyfusard; between two schools of thought, two systems of values, two ethics; between those who do battle for justice, truth, and freedom and those who fight on behalf of prejudices, established order, recognized organizations, and prior verdicts; between those who make the individual the measure of all things and those who revere entities higher than the individual, such as the Nation, the Army, the Party -- differences that also perpetually agitate human consciousness -- Alfred Dreyfus may have been one of those rare persons in whom such internal contradictions cannot be detected. (Bredin, pp. 532, 541, 543-544)
By his natural disposition, he seamlessly melded both traditions. He was content in every hierarchy in which he found himself. Similarly, without any discord, he made freedom and truth, the virtues of republicanism, his honor and his ideal. "The patriot's nation and the rights of man converged for him, and in him." (Bredin, p. 544)
His unified soul enabled him to mobilize the incredible resources necessary for his survival. Yet, upon his return to civilization and a house divided, the clash of the values he cherished and their bifurcation into irreconcilable hostile forces would enfeeble his body and darken his spirit. They were afflictions from which he would never recover. (Bredin, p. 544)
REFERENCES
Bredin, Jean-Denis. The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus. Trans. by Jeffrey Mehlman. New York: George Braziler, Inc., 1986
Chapman, Guy. The Dreyfus Case: A Reassessment. New York: Reynal and Company, 1956.
Lewis, David L. Prisoners of Honor: The Dreyfus Affair. New York: William Morrow & Company, 1973.
